Election campaign; the clock is ticking to find Tory candidates

Nominations for the general election close this afternoon. Here in Gateshead, we have one constituency fully within the area of the council and three that are partially within the borough. In three of these, the Conservatives are still to announce their candidates. I am assuming that they will announce them shortly. Surely, as the governing party, they are going to join the battle in these constituencies? Or has the rot gone too far within the Conservative party?

It was often the case in the past that a youngish Conservative from London would be given a map of the North East and told to head north for the 4 weeks of the campaign with their reward being a more winnable seat in the future. That no longer works as the collapse in Conservative support has made lots of their safe seats somewhat unsafe. So promises and payback are rather worthless now.

Meanwhile, Labour have obviously put in an order for new parachutes. Labour's NEC met recently to carve up the available winnable seats among themselves. The result is Starmer chum Mark Ferguson being parachuted into Gateshead Central and Whickham. The bulk of his campaigning activity in the constituency recently seems to amount to being here on local election polling day rushing around various wards taking photos of himself.

It was noteworthy that no local Labour candidate was in the running, or perhaps they were but their own party thought they weren't good enough for them!